H. Adler - The Journey

“Safe journey to you as well! You know what I mean, don’t you? And please greet your loved ones from me!”

Paul looks around, but his friend, whose hand he could still feel, has slipped around the corner, and Paul has to hurry in order to get back to his barracks on Kanonenberg. Paul is not happy, but rather in high spirits and sustained by a deep current of feeling, thoughts swimming clearly and in relaxed streams through his satisfied consciousness amid a fertile quiet. So feels the wanderer, and he had never known such a feeling before, how deep his memories stirred and how far back they reached. To walk along as light as a feather was no longer hard for Paul. He could not have stood to hurry so just a week ago. Now he moves on ahead with ease, even uphill, his breath supporting his relaxed gait. He tells himself with confidence that he will make it through the journey, he doesn’t have to worry about whatever trouble lies ahead. It will happen! It will happen! I will be on my way! The road beckons. Someone should rouse the late sleeper, he should hurry, it’s almost eleven, the time is here for the rabble, a whistle blows and rattles, a smile of derision rains down from behind, go on home, off with you, go on home!

“I’m already home! I leave tomorrow!”

The American shines a bright flashlight on the idiot who shouldn’t be out on the streets, wondering what kind of guy he’s dealing with. He cackles out an order in English as a well-meaning joke, then he is quiet. Paul no longer listens; he’s a long way off from being asked to do anything today. Paul is already in the yard, his steps slowing. He climbs the couple of steps and then for the last time is a guest in the officer’s room. He is happy that there is no longer blackout, at last the light can shine freely through the window. Quickly he readies his things for the morning. Then he goes to sleep.

Paul is glad that he has everything in order; now everything will be as easy as the first night he was in Unkenburg, but without any feeling of death. The image of Zerlina enters his thoughts without sadness, his parents also arrive and look peaceful. Paul bows his head before them and without any shyness considers the dead who are there with him. He is confident that he will not feel ashamed before them anymore, that he will venture forth on the journey, and that the hand of life has been extended to him. Onward! He senses that, as long as he remains here, his longing will diminish and dissipate. He must no longer cling to things with such intensity and can now pull himself away from the column that he was chained to until earlier that day. Paul can still hear the time strike in the middle of his sleep, a quarter after, half past, patiently on and on. Then he no longer noticed how the night grew ever deeper and embraced him more and more and let the quarter hours continue to strike.

When Paul awakens it is early morning. Yesterday has flowed into today, as if today were still yesterday. Paul has no time to waste. He gets up and thanks the bed that has taken him in. He folds a blanket and attaches it firmly to the knapsack. After washing he quickly packs. When he’s done he takes the mirror off the wall, wipes it clean, covers it with a clean hand towel, and buries it in between some underwear. Then he closes the knapsack. After a little meal, Paul grabs the satchel, then he lifts the knapsack and puts his arms through the straps, lifting his suitcase meanwhile with his left hand. Paul thanks the room that has put him up so well. Already he is in the hall; he doesn’t leave his name on the door, but rather rips up the note and throws it away, leaving the door open.

Paul crosses the yard and thanks the barracks, thanks Kanonenberg as well. Now he follows the road down the hill, once more through the city, the little park in full bloom, the general’s statue without a head, the extinguished cathedral, the picked-over rubble of the old city already partially swept away, paths in between having been shoveled clear. Paul sees again the theater’s wreckage, its decay even further advanced, the walls perhaps ready to collapse. Then comes the house where Frau Wildenschwert lives, then the long street, and before long he passes police headquarters. Finally Paul is at the station.

“They’re readying a train.”

The man in the red cap assured him it was so. Paul should stand in line with the others who are waiting. The crowd grants him a spot. Paul says thank you and shoves his suitcase forward, his free hand already clutching the cool railing. Perhaps the people understand why he’s in such a hurry. He thinks he sees them waving, wishing him a safe journey, the rubbish and the rubble vanquished at last.

* Frau Holle is the title character of a Brothers Grimm tale.

* Frau Ilsebill is the name of the wife in the Brothers Grimm tale “The Fisherman and His Wife.”

* Unken means “toads” in German. Hence, Unkenburg is the “town of toads.”

THE JOURNEY TELLS THE STORY OF PEOPLE WHO WERE FORBIDDEN. ORDINARY people with hopes and fears like the Lustig family. In the middle of their everyday life they receive the latest commandment, “Thou shalt not dwell among us!” and this simple sentence is the start of ever more monstrous decrees. “The entire world” has turned into “the forbidden.” The victims know it themselves: “We are all forbidden.” Such declarations reverse all normal conceptions, transforming a free society into a slave society with inverted institutions whose purpose it is to make life impossible. Thus we learn: “In the name of justice, injustice is installed.” Even though innocent people “invoke the need for justice,” what we hear is “Oh, what crazy ideas you get, still thinking about justice, as if you were never told that it’s already fit and just that inevitably you are ordered about and told to do things that only to you do not seem right.” Nothing remains as it was, and even the reader must find his way — led by the narrative voice — on a blind “journey” in a senseless world in which “all experience is betrayed,” where all words cease to exist, since in the end names “no longer mean anything.” In order to still try to evoke the unspeakable, the narrative voice chooses “the image of the journey.” Initially the “fleeting journey” simply serves as the image of fate, or in other words as a timeless metaphor for the plight of the people who have been forbidden. In addition, however, as is made clear at the start of the tale, the metaphor represents “memory itself, which sets out on the journey and is also dragged along through constant wandering.” Thus the novel creates the possibility of memory, by pursuing the path of the forbidden people through their own hopes and memories, in order to bear witness to the compassionate memory of the victims for posterity, and thus the simultaneous journey of the narrative voice itself. Elias Canetti recognized the groundbreaking aspect of this work: “It will become the classic book about this kind of ‘journey,’ no matter who is displaced or devastated, no matter to whom it happens.”

Born on July 2, 1910, in Prague, Hans Günther Adler grew up in a middle-class family, studied music, literature, philosophy, and psychology, and wrote a dissertation on “Klopstock and Music.” He experienced firsthand Hitler’s seizure of power while researching in archives in Berlin. He aspired to a career as an academic while seeking at the same time to establish himself as a writer. His hopes for each were destroyed in 1933. He then began work as a secretary in a Prague school for continuing education. By 1938 he had plans to emigrate. Unfortunately, these fell through. He remained in Prague and was intensely caught up in the confusion of the times. In 1941 he was put to work as a slave laborer building railroads. Then, in 1942, there followed his deportation to Theresienstadt along with his wife, the doctor Gertrud Klepetar, and her family. Gertrud’s father died there. Her aunt was transported east. Hans Günther and Gertrud Adler-Klepetar were deported to Auschwitz in 1944. There on the “ramp,” Gertrud chose to join her mother on “the bad side” in order that she should not die alone. After two weeks my father was transported to Niederorschel, an outlying camp of Buchenwald, and then to the underground factory at Langenstein, where he was finally liberated by American troops in April 1945.